1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus which prints first information comprising image information such as code information including a two-dimensional code, etc., and second information comprising character information, etc., on a print area having a designated size.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a printing apparatus which prints a symbol image of a two-dimensional code together with characters on a sheet has been proposed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2003-154774. This printing apparatus prints character information such as name, company name, address, etc. on a sheet of a name-card size, and also prints character information such as telephone number, facsimile number, URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address or e-mail address, etc. and a symbol image of a two-dimensional code embedded with encoded versions of these pieces of character information on a predetermined area of the name-card sheet, thereby to generate a name card.
This printing apparatus prints the symbol image of the two-dimensional code on the limited space of the sheet where also the pieces of character information are printed. Accordingly, the area left to be occupied by the symbol image of the two-dimensional code must become narrow, and the size of the symbol image of the two-dimensional code that can be printed becomes small. Then, as the size of the symbol image of the two-dimensional code becomes small, the amount of information that can be embedded on the symbol image is reduced. Furthermore, there might occur a problem that the information is misread when the data is read from the symbol image and decoded.